Are you coming?

A good friend of mine, Jeff, grew up in a rather rural part of the British Isles, some miles from the local town.

Jeff spent a fair chunk of August 1988 working on his car in the family garage, getting it ready to take to university in September. One Friday lunchtime, he was out in the garage again. He had the whole place to himself, with the rest of his family variously out at work, high school and the shops, so he took the opportunity of some peace and quiet to work on his distributor cap.

He was in the middle of switching the old cap for a new one when he heard footsteps crunching up the gravel path, unusual because he hadn’t heard a car, and there weren’t any other houses in the near vicinity. He glanced round, and saw a little boy walking up the driveway towards the garage door. The boy was maybe 10 or 11, wearing normal stuff, jeans, shirt, a light jacket. Jeff was just trying to fight the cap into place — it was quite tough, because of the engine design — so he tried to concentrate on not screwing up his progress, and didn’t pay much attention. He just assumed the boy was collecting for some cause or other.

Green and pleasant land, by Les Laurens

The footsteps stopped, and then the boy called out, saying “Hello?” in a perfectly normal voice.

Jeff didn’t turn round, but just yelled back “Yeah, what is it?”

“It’s time,” said the boy. “Are you coming?”

Jeff was still absorbed with the engine, and for some reason assumed that the boy was asking if he’d finished the work he was doing. He said “No, I’ll be a while yet.”

There was no reply, and then the total strangeness of the question hit him, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He let the cap ping off again, and turned around.

The drive was empty.

Jeff’s family home is set in a big open grass yard, which ran right up to the road. There were some small decorative rocks to mark the boundary, but no trees in the immediate vicinity, no convenient shed to scurry behind, nowhere to hide, nowhere the boy could have gone at all. He’d just vanished.

Ever since, we’ve wondered: what if Jeff had been just as distracted, but had felt like a break, and answered “Okay”… What would he be now?